


Topping!

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cake, Cake Fic Meme, Gen, Humor, Multi-Era, Partial Nudity, Pink Elephants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 23:52:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Tenth Doctor finds himself naked, covered in cake and chained to his Third persona, who only arrived to stop the Master's culinary plot.  (This seems to be a recurring nightmare, but what can you do?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Topping!

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cake Fic meme for Death By Aspirin quite a long time ago. There were reasons. Good ones. Possibly. But also cake.

The Doctor, attired with his usual flair (frills and velvet, naturally), raced down the steps of the throne room, his cape flapping out behind him. “Your majesties! I beg of you, do not -.” Before he could finish the sentence with ‘eat one crumb of that cake’, a figure fell through the ceiling and directly into the vast, royal birthday cake, rendering the order somewhat redundant. He stared and although it had happened much too quickly to be certain, he had a feeling the fellow hadn’t been wearing any clothes at all.

Everyone else was equally stunned, including the Master, standing there across on the other side of the royal party – wearing a ridiculous chef’s hat, thought the Doctor in disgust, considering he’d made the most of it up from one of those dreadful packet-mixes. Just fiddled about with the icing and suddenly here he was claiming to be a _cordon bleu_ chef.

“As I said,” put in the Master, addressing the King, “his villainy knows no bounds. Undoubtedly this sabotage is his doing. Shocking, isn’t it?” 

The Doctor turned. “Sabotage? Whoever that was has saved your lives, your majesties.” He reached the collapsed sponge cake ahead of the rest of the shocked audience and looked to the cake-diver. “Are you all right, my dear chap? Timely intervention, but a little -”

A spiky brown head emerged, spitting out sponge and butter icing. “Just as well it’s not harmful to us Time Lords, isn’t it? Have to be a Gurgifregiggan to be affected by something like vanilla essence.”

“It’s Gurgifren,” he snapped back, his expression changing as soon as he registered precisely who had fallen naked into the confection. “Trust you to insert unnecessary syllables. And of all the ‘me’s it could be, it would be _you_!”

He coughed. “Yes, well, I know I said I’d never tangle with your timeline again and all, but it’s been a long decade or so and there I was thinking I knew I’d been to Gurgifreggigantia before and I couldn’t remember when. Didn’t come to me until the moment I fell through the ceiling there and it was a bit late by then. As crash mats go, you couldn’t ask for a tastier one. Baked to perfection and everything – light as air. My compliments to the chef.”

“I’m afraid he’s made his escape while you were talking. A whole horde of Ogrons could have made their escape while you were talking,” said the Doctor, still glaring at his future self. He had, until meeting this version, felt that his past selves were the limit, but as for this irresponsible, over-talkative, skinny, scruffily dressed -. He halted the mental tirade as that brought up a pertinent aspect of the matter. “Far be it from me to bring up a personal topic, but you seem distinctly under-dressed to me.”

The King intervened, getting to his feet in outrage. “Who is this insolent intruder who has ruined my daughter’s birthday celebrations?”

“I’d forgotten they looked so much like pink elephants,” said the later Doctor, clearly finding it an effort to stay in one place and remembering each time he tried to move from the mess of icing and sponge that he was currently somewhat challenged in the clothes department. “Lovely species. Charming. Hallo there, your majesty. I’m sure this must seem a bit unexpected, but just a little birthday message from an admirer - Hmm, maybe not the best tack to take here - Let me think -”

The younger Doctor directed a look at him that would have sliced through something much tougher than sponge. “Will you be quiet?” He sighed and then removed his cape, though clearly this was going to ruin it. “Here. Please, put this on and remove yourself. Now, your majesty, if I might explain -”

The ‘pink elephant’ had gone distinctly purple.

*

“It’s hardly _my_ fault,” said the later Doctor, when they’d been unceremoniously marched off and dumped in the castle dungeons, chained together, back to back, both of them rather the worse for cake cream, jam and crumbs. His voice rose. “I mean, I fall out of the ceiling, into the Master’s cake and suddenly it’s my fault?”

“I had everything under control!”

“Well, as I remember it the little heir to the throne was about to receive a great big slice of deadly vanilla flavoured sponge, provided by the Master. What would have happened, then, eh?”

He sighed. “As I said, I had the whole thing under control, until you dropped in, ruined the birthday cake and provided the Master with a convenient distraction so that he could make his escape. And, more importantly, _where are your clothes_?”

“Oh, now, there’s a perfectly simple explanation for that -”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” 

“Oy.”

“I hardly want to discover that for some reason, in the future I take to travelling about the cosmos naked. I have enough to contend with as it is, I can assure you.”

“Well, there I was, landing on Gurgifreggeggigantia -”

“Gurgifrentia. You added in another syllable just then.” He twisted round, in his chains. “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“No, I’m not. Do I seem drunk to you?”

The earlier Doctor sighed. “My dear chap, you fell naked through the ceiling into a giant birthday cake, talked incessantly and can’t pronounce the name of the planet you’re on. It might explain a few things. Are you expecting me to believe I go round doing that sort of thing when I’m sober?”

“Well, I’m not drunk. As it happens, Donna and I -”

“Miss Noble? I’m surprised she lets you get away with this sort of behaviour.”

“I dunno, you say I talk a lot and then you won’t let me get a word in edgeways- Erm. What are you doing? _Aargh_. Stop playing with the chains -”

The other Doctor was busy concentrating.

The older one brightened suddenly. “Oh, you’re trying _that_ trick – will you stop it? Some of us have got chains in places you don’t want to know about.”

“And not much left of our grammar,” he returned. “No, I don’t think it’s going to work. And you still haven’t explained why you were wandering about naked.”

The newer Doctor sighed. “I was trying. Look, it so happens that the little princess also had a pet for her birthday – a karhimidon.”

“That explains everything, does it?”

He said, “Yeah. Nothing a karhimidon likes to snack on more than a tasteful suit, I can tell you. Obviously, little Miss Nellie remembers to feed her pets about as often as the average youngster. I went over to pat the thing on the head and _snarf_! No more suit. And, what’s more, before I could blink, not a stitch left on me. I liked that suit, too.”

“So it is your fault.”

“What?”

He said, “You rashly went up to this creature even though you knew it dined on textiles. What did you expect?”

“Well, a hole in the pocket at the worst. Normally friendly little things, Karhimidons. Must have been starving to take a whole outfit like that. Those were my lucky pants and everything.”

The earlier Doctor stared at the ceiling. “I don’t want to sound prudish when I’m talking to myself, but quite frankly, the only context in which I want to talk about your underwear is if you’ve managed to find some and that seems sadly improbable at this moment in time.”

“What, you think I like sitting around here, naked, in a cold dungeon in what’s probably some dangerous timey-wimey paradoxical -”

“Must you do that?”

He grinned. “Why not?”

“Because it makes me sound imbecilic. It was bad enough when I was the short one with the recorder, but at least I could speak.”

“Anyway, if you hadn’t interrupted when I was trying to explain the situation to his majesty, going on about evil his favourite chef was, I’d have sorted the whole mess out with my usual charm.”

“Not to mention modesty.”

“We-e-el-ll,” said the newest Doctor, drawing out the word. “Well, we never were exactly a blushing wallflower, were we? Oh, except maybe that one regeneration … that you won’t remember yet. Whoops.”

“Yet again, your insufferable irresponsibility with regard to the timeline -”

“Yeah, all right, can we skip the lecture and get onto important things like, I mean, I haven’t got my sonic screwdriver with me for obvious reasons, but where’s yours?”

He sighed. “I leant it to the Brigadier. How was I to know the Time Lords were about to whisk me off here without warning – not so much as a by-your-leave or a moment to fetch Jo -”

“Ah,” said the naked Doctor, giving a sigh of nostalgia. “Those were the days. I still miss that hot, sweet army tea you know. And Sergeant Benton’s coffee – I always said that -”

His younger self found it excessively irritating not being able to actually glare at him, but then again, when he thought, that had definite compensations in other respects. “That is exactly the type of irritating, thoughtless prattle -”

“Well, I try,” said the later Doctor. “Sorry. I can see why I might annoy me, but just think I could have been the next me. For you, I mean. Can you imagine?”

The other Doctor was paying no attention, still on the subject of Time Lords. “I thought they’d stopped doing that sort of thing after the affair with Omega, but apparently, now I’m supposed to fly half-way across the galaxy every time the Master tries his hand in the kitchen. Speaking of which, your idiot stunt gave him all the opportunity he needed to slip away -”

“Hang about, hang about,” said the latest Doctor. “You’ve been blaming me for this and, I mean, I can see how it’s galling to have an older-but-appears-younger, better looking incarnation suddenly turn up -”

“Stark naked, may I add?”

“Yes, but I wish you’d stop going on about it. I’ve explained, haven’t I? Sort of thing that could happen to anyone. Anyway, I can understand that, fair enough. But why didn’t I remember that this was going to happen? You wouldn’t have gone and, say, blocked it out of your memories or something?”

He thought about that. “What a splendid idea.”

“Well, then, it’s your fault, so stop blaming me. Look, haven’t you got anything in your pocket? We always have great stuff lying about in our pockets. I got so as I used to be able to swipe a cup of tea, put it in my coat pocket and not even spill it – never could quite work that one out a second time, though.”

“I’m afraid Jo very kindly took this to the dry cleaners yesterday. An errand she will now be forced to repeat, thanks to you.”

“Well, you could take it yourself.” He shook his head. “I dunno. Still, you try that sort of thing with Sarah and see where it gets you.”

“With who?”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to see why you might have needed to forget this, even aside from my attack of nudity.”

*

“Do you two want rescuing or do you want to stay there and argue all night?”

They both looked up to see Donna standing there in the doorway, a crumpled suit and a pair of trainers in her arms.

“Donna,” said her Doctor, straining his neck to see her. “You’ve got my clothes. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. What took you so long?”

She moved over. “Hello again there, Other Doctor.”

“A pleasure to see you once more, Miss Noble.”

“Thank you. Where you lost all those manners to, Spaceman, I don’t know. Anyway, I took ‘so long’, because I had to go to the king and explain that this was an accident and got Princess Allia to ask for your release as an extra birthday present. When I explained to her that her pet had eaten your clothes, she thought it was so funny, she wanted to keep you as well. Anyway, I got _that_ sorted and then what did I see but that old enemy of yours, the one with the beard and the manners and the voice -”

“Donna!”

“So, obviously, I knew that couldn’t be good and walloped him one with the trainers before he could manage ‘good morning’ and explained to the guards that he was an escaped criminal. He’s locked up next door.” 

The earlier Doctor glanced at the wall. “So he didn’t get away with it for once. Well done, Miss Noble.”

“Oh, you can call me Donna,” she said, unlocking the padlock on the chains.

Her Doctor said, “Donna, that is still me you’re flirting with. Stop it. It’s scary.”

They both turned.

“My dear fellow,” said his earlier self, “Miss Noble has fetched you your clothes – now, please _put them back on_.”

He grabbed at the blue suit. “Well, I need a bath first. I’ll wreck these – two suits in one day.”

They both glared.

“Put them on _NOW_ ,” said Donna. “No way am I wandering about looking for a bathroom in the royal palace with you starkers. Nobody should have to see that. There ought to be a law against it. Hah. There probably is.”

The other Doctor got to his feet, brushing down the ruined velvet. “I seem to be covered in cake.”

“Yeah, I can see,” she said. She looked between them, a thoughtful look crossing her face. “Shame it couldn’t have been the other way around -.”

“ _Donna_!”

He smiled at her. “I’m not as foolish as it seems I’m going to become. Senility, I suppose -”

There was a muffled cry of objection from underneath a shirt behind them.

“Yeah,” said Donna. “You should have seen it, dancing out of the TARDIS, all ‘it’s Gurgigig-whatever and here’s a Carmidgeon, cute things, Donna and can you guess what they eat’? Next second, I _really_ don’t need to. 

“There was no need to scream,” said her Doctor, sounding sulky. “Monsters, yeah. Naked people – well, we’re all the same underneath, aren’t we?”

She ignored him. “And, I mean, I told him right off when we started that I didn’t want any funny business. Skinny streak of nothing, all _naked_ in front of me. Can you blame me if I yelled? And _then_ , I go back to get his clothes and find he’s fallen through the big hole in the floor.”

The Doctor was looking at least something approaching decent by now. “What was that about? I mean, who goes leaving whacking great holes like that in the royal apartments? Weird.”

“They’re prayer holes or something, apparently,” she informed him. “I thought you were supposed to know everything, spaceman.”

He grinned. “Don’t be silly, Donna. Not everything. I mean, _most_ things, but I wouldn’t like to boast.”

That done, the two Doctors turned to each other.

“Well,” said the white-haired Doctor, his hand to the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s been an experience, shall we say?”

His future self shook his hand with enthusiasm. “True. Don’t you forget to forget about it, now.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

“What about that Master blokey?” asked Donna.

They exchanged a glance.

“I don’t think he’ll get into too much trouble here,” said the Doctor. “Do him no harm to stay locked up for a while.”

“Yeah,” said the later Doctor. “Not very susceptible to hypnosis, the Gurgifreggeggigiggans. Famous for it.”

“Gurgifren!”

Donna rolled her eyes. She gave the earlier Doctor a wink as she grabbed hold of her Time Lord. “I’ll get him out of here before he gets himself into any more trouble, then.”

“I think you’d better,” said the other, with a smile. “Thank you for the rescue, Miss Noble.”

She smiled back at him and as they left, he distinctly heard her telling his future self, “See, you had manners once. What did you do with them? Drop them overboard in a crisis?”

“Manners,” said the Doctor. “Hah. You can talk!”

“I’m not the one who got locked up _naked_ in a dungeon with a lot of cake and chained to an earlier version of himself.”

He coughed. “How long is it going to take for me to live this down?”

“Ooh, let me think,” said Donna. “About as long as I’m around – which, matey, is going to be a while.”

“And there’s nowhere I could take you that might make you not mention it every other second?”

She grinned. “I suppose, if you took me somewhere really exciting, I might not talk about it for, oh, whole hours at a time.”

“You’re on!” said the Doctor, opening the TARDIS door and leading the way in. “Mind you,” he added fairly. “Could have been worse. That was some damn fine cake, that was, especially when you think who made it. Want to try some?”

She stared back at him. “No!”

And on her note of horror, the TARDIS de-materialised.


End file.
